This is Just Too Cool ...

From Wikipedia:

By 1890, Thomas Edison had brought together several of his business interests under one corporation to form Edison General Electric. At about the same time, Thomson-Houston Electric Company, under the leadership of Charles Coffin, gained access to a number of key patents through the acquisition of a number of competitors. Subsequently, General Electric was formed by the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric of Schenectady, New York, and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, and both plants remain in operation under the GE banner to this day. 

First of all, I know Lynn very, very well -- I have driven through it many, many times while taking care of my granddaughters in Boston. But that's not the reason for the post.

Edison Electric Appliance Company

In 1918 the company, known as the Hotpoint Electric Heating Company from 1912, merged with the Heating Device Section of General Electric, becoming the Edison Electric Appliance Company, later just a division of GE in 1927 when it bought the factory and entire company. It became known as the Edison General Electric Company in 1931. [at odds with link above]

History of Hotpoint

This 1922 Hotpoint range, made by the Edison Electric Company is typical of the period. The company was formed by a merger of the Hughes Electric Heating Company, Hotpoint Electric Heating Company and the heating device section of General Electric in 1918, in order to produce products under the Hotpoint brand name.

The first range, Model 1, was produced in 1919. The Hughes Company was founded in 1910 by George A. Hughes, who introduced the first "electric cook stove" that year. Hughes became the first president of the newly-formed Edison Electric Company in 1918.

The Hotpoint Company was formed in 1912, based on the popularity of the "hot point" on an iron marketed in 1905 by Earl Richardson. In 1907, the iron formally was marketed as the Hotpoint Iron.

Up until 1922, all electric ranges were in black, brown or both. The Edison Electric Appliance Company model shown here (go to link), you will notice, did have a white oven door nameplate, a simple flat porcelain enamel sheet, probably to dramatize the new name. But this year, Edison Electric received an order from a Raleigh, NC utility executive for an all- white, porcelain stove. Rather than admit that such a stove was not being produced, Edison quoted an exorbitantly high price to discourage him. Upon receiving an order anyway, they felt obligated to develop a new annealing process to apply the enamel on the entire stove.

Thus it was that 1923 Hotpoint models included all-white ranges with nickel trim on the door, and thereafter, white became widely accepted in the industry for ranges, dominating until the 1960s. In 1931, the Edison Electric Appliance Company became the Edison General Electric Company, and in 1934, General Electric and Hotpoint brand production was integrated, retaining both brand names, by that time, in refrigerators, as well.

North Dakota History

The family of Alexander Hughes (1843 - 1907) also exemplifies the captain-of-industry qualities so often found in the Scotch-Irish.....After conspiring with a Canadian-born Scot, Alexander McKenzie, to relocate the Dakota capital in Bismarck, he moved there (Bismarck) to practice law and handle the North Pacific Railroad's legal problems as its assistant counsel from 1887 to 1901.

His son Edmond (1873 - 1970) was experimenting with electricity at the electric utility in Bismarck in which his father had invested the family's money. From this interest came his involvement in the Hughes Electric Company, which had brought the boon of electric lighting to the capital and which evolved into the Montana-Dakota Utilities Company of today.

Edmond was not the only energetic, innovative Hughes. His brother George developed the first practicable electric stove, the Hughes stove. This became the Hotpoint when George became president, and later chairman of the board of directors of the Edison General Electric Appliance Company, which manufactured one-third of the eight million electric ranges produced in the United States by 1950.

And now it's the Bakken. Who wudda thought?